The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union is de­mand­ing an­swers from TSTT on its ac­qui­si­tion of Am­plia, say­ing it be­lieves the de­ci­sion is an at­tempt to send home thou­sands of work­ers.

Speak­ing on the CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew on Wednes­day CWU Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Clyde El­der said TSTT has in­formed res­i­den­tial fi­bre cus­tomers that Am­plia will be han­dling the work from Oc­to­ber 15.

El­der said this ef­fec­tive­ly means that “they are di­min­ish­ing and de­creas­ing the work of the TSTT staff and we see that as an at­tempt to lay the foun­da­tion to re­trench per­sons at some point in time.”

He said TSTT staff is “unionised, they are a per­ma­nent work­force,” as he ac­cused the com­pa­ny of vi­o­lat­ing ar­ti­cle 12 of the in­dus­tri­al agree­ment. He said re­quests for a meet­ing had gone unan­swered.

El­der said TSTT has the most ro­bust fi­bre net­work in the Caribbean which has been op­er­at­ed by work­ers. El­der said the union was al­so part of a Fi­bre Im­ple­men­ta­tion Project team.

“We are on board to en­sure that TSTT is vi­able and moves in­to the new age,” he said.

El­der said what TSTT was not telling cus­tomers was that “they will send you across, whether you like it or not.” But, he said, Am­plia “does not have a mo­bile con­ces­sion or li­cence, they de­pend on TSTT ser­vice to give you a ser­vice. It means they are the mid­dle man and you will pay more.”

Last Fri­day, the In­dus­tri­al Court ruled in favour of the union and TSTT is­sued a brief state­ment de­scrib­ing the court rul­ing as “sur­pris­ing.” El­der said the re­al ques­tion is “why did they not ap­peal the judge­ment of the In­dus­tri­al Court.”

Fol­low­ing the court rul­ing TSTT said it will take the re­quired next steps to en­sure that the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to­wards sus­tained prof­itabil­i­ty.

TSTT in­sist­ed it “does not out­source its res­i­den­tial fi­bre ser­vices.”

It said, “Am­plia is a 100 per cent whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of TSTT and has al­ways op­er­at­ed as such. TSTT man­ages all of its op­er­a­tions in good faith and will con­tin­ue to do so.”

El­der in­sist­ed that Am­plia had been bad for TSTT. He said, “TSTT made a prof­it of less than $8 m at the end of the last fi­nan­cial year and that is be­cause of the Am­plia ac­qui­si­tion that took a hit on the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.”

He said TSTT paid “$215 m for Am­plia,” mon­ey which, he said, “could have been in­vest­ed in TSTT” to make the com­pa­ny more fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able.

El­der ac­cused TSTT of “play­ing se­man­tics,” say­ing in law Am­plia is a sep­a­rate le­gal en­ti­ty to TSTT.

He said what was hap­pen­ing at TSTT was “Petrotrin in the re­verse,” as he ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of hav­ing a plan “to de­stroy unions.”

Ac­cord­ing to El­der, “with CWU, there is no da­ta to sug­gest that job cuts are need­ed. What we agree on, is that once you mov­ing from cop­per to fi­bre it will re­sult in the re­or­gan­is­ing and re­align­ment of the com­pa­ny, but that does not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to few­er work­ers.”